A Great Education

A Great Education

A Great Education

Aneurin Bevan woke up in flat Bathurst, to the drone
of Julia Gillard’s ‘Ben Chifley, Light on the Hill’
speech as she condescended that Chifley
always regretted his lack of  ‘a great education’.
Bevan had left school at thirteen, self-taught proudly
like Chifley. He wondered if Gillard ever knew
the power of freely chosen knowledge. When young,
he’d detested that chainstore quality he called
‘Everything in its place and nothing above
sixpence.’  She liked ‘universality of education’, her faith
in uniforms startling to a man who thought
socialism meant avoiding them, her stress
on educational achievements hollowly passim
insisting one acknowledge all her own. He thought
of Chifley and Evatt roasting baked potatoes
on a Murray houseboat, each free of envy
of the other’s erudition. Then his irritation
became pity when he pictured Gillard
Welshly stiff in a little uniform, Welsh-mam-bossy
like his own mother, or nervously flirty, that old anxiety
of women for respect in crisis leaping
at their throats like blazer emblems,
unable to orate as he had:  to think swiftly
on the spot, as his hand pressed on his heart.